Ritchie Vineyard Chardonnay Reviews

With a floral entry of jasmine and fennel, this is an earthy, balanced wine with ample complexity and a spicy center of Gravenstein apple and baking spice. The oak is well integrated and present. Virginie Boone

Juicy in pear, pineapple and peach, this is a soft, rounded wine, defined in richness, with balance and length. The famous vineyard's Goldridge soils help to contribute a softness to the wine alongside subtle baking spice and toasted oak. -Virginie Boone

The 2015 Chardonnay Ritchie Vineyard opens with notes of toasty oak and cashews, giving way to a core of ripe pineapple, guava and passion fruit with a touch of brioche. Medium to full-bodied with a pleasant oiliness to the texture, it offers a lively backbone to lift the concentrated tropical flavors, finishing long and savory.

This is an expansive, vibrantly alive and buzzy white that’s floral in apple and orange blossom aromas. Its freshness is complemented by richer deeper undertones of baked quince and tangerine, with a gravelly stony quality to the texture that makes it hard to resist. 

The 2014 Chardonnay Ritchie Vineyard opens with white peach, spiced apples and green guava notes, plus underlying brioche and candied ginger hints. Medium-bodied, it has mouth-filling stone fruit and toasty flavors, with a satiny texture and racy line of acid, finishing with very good persistence.

Stony minerality surrounds sublime texture in this full bodied, balanced expression of the appellation’s Middle Reach neighborhood, an area known for producing wines of great beauty and subtle power. Apple, pear and richer characteristics of stone fruit are succulent on the palate, while a racy spiciness intrigues.